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Skysaber

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Hello my fellow Rocketeers! My name is Chris, and I am a new member to this forum. I am not new to rocketry, however.

I have come here to ask your support. Myself and a team of two of my peers have decided that we want to set a new world altitude record for water rocketry. Our school club which we are based out of does not have the money available to finance such an endeavor, and we, ourselves, have a difficult time funding our projects on their own. That is why I come to my brothers and sisters of the sky to ask for your much needed support.

Even if you cannot donate, maybe spread the word to your friends or family. Any support is greatly appreciated.

If you would like to donate to our glorious cause, then here is the link: www.gofundme.com/world-record-water-rocket



-Edit

I have shut down the campaign after careful consideration, and the reasons can be found below, I am not going to list them again.

we have been asked for some specs of our new rocket design, so here they are:
Volume:~6 liters
Nozzle Diameter: 22mm
Dry Mass:1300 g
We will be using a launch tube,
The rocket will have a fiberglass skeleton and then be reinforced with carbon fiber.
The record we are trying to beat is 2723 feet or ~830 meters. We hope to achieve 3000 feet or more.

The video of our latest rocket, the one which we will base our new one off of, can be found here: [video=youtube;PGb_vLv7xM4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGb_vLv7xM4[/video]
 
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What outreach steps have you taken in your local community, e.g. selling businesses logo space? A write-up in the local paper w/ their logo prominently displayed could be a decent incentive.
 
We have reached out to a couple of local businesses, but no dice, unfortunately. We also tried to set up a fundraising night at a local Chipotle, but we got rejected. My guess would be that our club is too small for them to be able to justify the money, we only have a few active members, and even those are intermittent.
 
We currently only have rough sketches of what we want in the rocket. I can send them when I get home later today, but for now I can give you some rough dimensions: total volume~6 liters
Nozzle diameter:22mm
Max dry mass:1300g
Height of rocket: ~9 feet
Fuselage inner diameter:2.375 inches

We will construct an inner skeleton of fiberglass and then overlay carbon fiber on top to reinforce the pressure vessel

For fundraising, yes we can sell things as far as I'm aware, but our club is so small that finding anyone to help with something like a bake sale is difficult at best. We have done concesssion stand nights, but we only get about 100 dollars a night from those, and the money raised their goes to support supplies for the whole club, not just our rocket. Our sponsor has made it clear that the club can't find our build,and any fund-raising would have to be done by us as individuals, due to the fact that we only have about 250 dollars in our account for club wide materials
 
You should probably look up some design documents for carbon fiber pressure vessels. At the pressures you will be using, you don't want them to burst in your face. Also might not be a bad idea to contact the George Katz from https://www.aircommandrockets.com/ he has done something very similar to what you are planning.
 
I looked at your gofundme page and honestly, I was not impressed. The last photo looks like three guys goofing off who want other people to send them money so they can goof off some more. Secondly, you provide no substantial information on how you plan on breaking the record. For example, what is the world record you want to break? 2,000 feet? 5,000 feet? What have you already achieved and how do you plan on going higher? What makes you think your rocket will surpass the world record? In other words, how is it better than what the current record holders have accomplished?
 
I have been following Mr. Katz for several years now, and his work and documentation is what has helped us through our progression in this area. We will definitely take your advice and look more into pressure vessel designs, thanks for your input
 
I appreciate your feedback, and I'm sorry that our page comes across that way. When it was written the thought was to keep the tone light and energetic so we would seem a bit more likeable. Believe me, our goal is not to get people to give us money to screw around. As for your latter suggestions, I will certainly add that information to our page.

I am pretty sure I stated the record in the page though, but I may have forgotten it. It went through several iterations before what you see now, and I may have had it in an earlier version but left it out of the most recent.

Again,very sorry that you were not impressed, I will make some changes to the page and hopefully it will come across as more genuine
 
A couple of questions:


Why did you choose 22 mm for the nozzle?

Will you use a launch tube?

Have you simulated your rocket? Do you have an estimate of its altitude?

What is the brass for?

How are you designing the rocket? Are you using any software?

You said that this is for the Water Rocket Acheivement World Record Association.
(https://www.wra2.org/WRA2_Class_A_Rules.php)

Can you have a boosted dart while following those rules?


I would revise the process a bit:

The first things should be)
Design rocket- There are programs to simulate the water rocket engine and can provide a thrust curve. You can find data for the materials online. Build the pressure chamber to at least 2x the required burst strength and contact WRAWRA with your designs and check for compatibility with the rules first. You don't want to find out you missed something in the end.

Since weight (and thus maximum possible strength (and thus engine power)) is limited, you need efficient aerodynamics to get higher. I can't quite tell yet, and sorry if I'm wrongly accusing you, but it doesn't seem like you're focusing on determining the optimal form much. (You didn't mention it in the gofundme. )

On your previous rocket:
The fins are a bit far forward. If you moved them back (hypothetically) and extended them onto the boat tail, the CP would also go back, so the fins size can be decreased, reducing drag.
 
I have just updated our page to hopefully come across as less childish. Perhaps you could check it out and let me know your thoughts, I would really appreciate it
 
We have simulated our rocket, and that's actually how we derived the numbers I have stated. 22 mm for the nozzle is what returned a good balance between high thrust and enough impulse.

We are planning to use a launch tube, though I will have to check the length of it later as the dimensions escape me currently.

The brass will be used to machine the actual launching assembly. It will essentially be an adapter from the air line to the launch tube.

The design we are considering currently is similar to our older model, but with revised aerodynamics and more efficient fins. The major reason the fins are positioned where they are on this rocket is because of the nozzle reduces section(the conical area at the bottom) and it having the shape it does. The new design would not incorporate such an elongated reducer, which would allow the find to be further from the cg.

The rocket shown in the pics and video was built as a proof of concept. We were trying our hand at higher pressure rockets to see what was possible.

As for you mentioning boosted darts,I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you are referencing the final clip of the video where it crashed, that was due to a parachute malfunction, not a design feature. We cannot lawn dart rockets in competitions.

Thanks for the feedback, and please address any other concerns you may have
 
A boosted dart is where a smaller, dense part of the rocket drag separates from the booster. The booster, being wide, slows down quickly, even more with the lack of mass (mass means inertia) to keep it going. The dart can be smaller and denser and thus cruise further than having a one piece rocket.
 
Got any pictures of you guys laying up fiberglass or testing the rocket? That would make you seem more professional.
 
No, that is forbidden in the rules. All rockets must be one mass, and cannot seperate into smaller pieces. Thanks for the clarification
 
I would like to inform you all that after careful consideration with the group, we have decided to remove out gofundme campaign. Here are the reasons:

As Zeus stated earlier, we sound like we are trying to get money to mess around, and we do not want that.

Second, we do not want to disappoint any donors if we do not succeed, or the vehicle crashes or fails. Personally, I would prefer to only be accountable to ourselves, as I do not want to let anyone down in the wake of our failure(though we are confident in our abilities, unforeseen issues could arise).

Finally, we have realized that our vague wording and lack of drawings could lead to uneasiness, and that perhaps our design is not as far along as we would have liked it to be.

For these reasons we have pulled the campaign, and I apologize for wasting everyone's time with our poorly thought out campaign. However, the cancellation of the campaign does not mean our project has been stopped. I would like this thread to remain a place where our group can receive advice from more experienced rocketeers, and I will add an edit to my original post of some pictures of our rocket and the building, as well as some other specs of our new design.

Thanks to everyone to who did waste their time looking at our page, your feedback was greatly appreciated.
 
You learned some valuable lessons from posting that page and from the feedback from this forum. I can't speak for Zeus-Cat but if I was him I wouldn't consider it a waste of my time. By posting feedback he was expressing some interest in the project if only to critique it. And if you learned something then it definitely wasn't a wast of your time.
Perhaps when you can revisit having a GoFundMe page in the future using what you have learned.
 
I feel if you are asking people for money, then you should make it clear why you want the money and how you intend to spend it. My post was never meant to ridicule you, but rather to show you how an outsider saw your request. When I posted my critique of your gofundme page I noticed that you hadn't received any donations. My intent was to provide feedback so you could improve the page and try to raise your funds.

I don't know you and most likely most of the people who went to your page don't know you. As you get older you will find out that a lot of people ask you for money. And many of the causes are good ones. You have to decide what to give to and what to ignore. I went to your page and it didn't inspire me at all to give to you. I just didn't have a clear vision of what you were doing to surpass the record.
 
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